Ass-backwards
Posted: Wed May 27, 2020 7:09 pm
@cmloegcmluin's use of this term here, prompts the following digression.
"Ass-backwards", or "arse-backwards" in the British/Australian spelling which disallows the cop-out claim that you were referring to a beast of burden, is clearly the normal state of affairs. Were I not to proceed with my arse facing in the direction from which I have come, I would probably fall over a lot more than I do.
But in fact, this is a linguistic example where two negatives do not make a positive, as logic would have it, but somehow make a stronger negative. Perhaps it can be understood as a contraction of the phrase "arse-about and backwards" whose redundancy serves as emphasis.
This reminds me of the joke about the linguistics professor giving a lecture where he claims that, in natural languages, one can find examples of two negatives making a positive, two negatives making a negative, and of course two positives making a positive. "But", he says, "you will never find two positives making a negative".
As he pauses to let this sink in, some smart-aleck at the back of the lecture hall, calls out in his most sarcastic tone, "Yeah, right".
And Slavoj Zizek's cafe, where the customer asks, "Please bring me a coffee without cream?" Some minutes later the waiter returns and says, "I'm sorry, we don't have any cream. Could I get you a coffee without milk instead".
"Ass-backwards", or "arse-backwards" in the British/Australian spelling which disallows the cop-out claim that you were referring to a beast of burden, is clearly the normal state of affairs. Were I not to proceed with my arse facing in the direction from which I have come, I would probably fall over a lot more than I do.
But in fact, this is a linguistic example where two negatives do not make a positive, as logic would have it, but somehow make a stronger negative. Perhaps it can be understood as a contraction of the phrase "arse-about and backwards" whose redundancy serves as emphasis.
This reminds me of the joke about the linguistics professor giving a lecture where he claims that, in natural languages, one can find examples of two negatives making a positive, two negatives making a negative, and of course two positives making a positive. "But", he says, "you will never find two positives making a negative".
As he pauses to let this sink in, some smart-aleck at the back of the lecture hall, calls out in his most sarcastic tone, "Yeah, right".
And Slavoj Zizek's cafe, where the customer asks, "Please bring me a coffee without cream?" Some minutes later the waiter returns and says, "I'm sorry, we don't have any cream. Could I get you a coffee without milk instead".